The old nickname made the brothers grin. And when Bill Sullivan from the feed store came up, clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Hey, Jake, great to see you,” Jake shook hands, said whatever he was supposed to say….
Until, in a sudden break in the crowd, he saw the woman again.
He had a clearer look at her now, and more time to savor it.
Her hair was the color of rich coffee, thick and shiny; she’d pulled it back with something he couldn’t quite make out, pins or maybe combs.
The style, if you could call it that, was simple …
So was the image that came into his head.
He could see her brushing those lush locks into submission. Her arms were raised, her breasts were thrust up so the nipples were elevated—
Elevated and ready for the whisper of a man’s tongue, for the heat of his mouth …
“Jake?”
His groin tightened.
And that face.
Sculpted bones beneath creamy skin. Gray eyes. No. They were more
silver than gray. A straight, no-nonsense nose above a mouth made for things best dreamed of in the deepest dark of the night….
“Jake?”
A hot rush of lust drove through his belly, so quick and fierce that it stunned him. He hadn’t felt anything like it for a long time.
A very long time.
“Hey, man, where’d you go?”
He blinked himself back to reality, swung toward Travis, saw the plate of food he was holding out. Food was the last thing he wanted right now, but he took the plate and forced a smile to his lips.
“Just what I needed,” he said briskly. “Thanks.”
Travis and Caleb began eating. He did, too, though nothing he put in his mouth had any taste.
He wanted to turn around and look at the woman with the silver eyes.
Ridiculous, really.
What would be the point? Forget that moment of lust or hunger or whatever in hell it had been.
At most, it had been an aberration.
The unbelievable truth was that he wasn’t into sex anymore, wasn’t into wanting it or even thinking about it. His sex drive had gone south.
Like the eye, it simply wasn’t there anymore.
Besides, he knew what he looked like. A guy with a Halloween mask for a face …
“… and damned if Lissa didn’t say, ‘Barbecue? Barbecue?’ In that way she has, you know, of making you feel as if it’s you who’s crazy, not her?”
Travis laughed, so Jake laughed, too, but his thoughts returned to the woman.
And to the sudden certainty that she was watching him.